They stared at him.
He smiled one-sidedly. "I'd like us to have our pick of planets, when we get around to interstellar colonization," he said. "And I'd like us to become the—oh, the elders. Not imperialists; that idea's ridiculous; but the people who were there first, and know their way around, and are worth learning from. Never mind what shape the younger races have. Who cares? But let's make this, as early as possible, a human galaxy, in the deepest sense of the word 'human.' Maybe even a human universe.
"I think we've earned that right."
XVI
That Leonora Christine took less than a month to find her new home was partly good fortune, but also due forethought.
The new-born atoms had burst outward with a random distribution of velocities. Thus, in the course of mega- and begayears, they formed hydrogen clouds which attained distinct individualities. While they drifted apart, these clouds condensed into sub-clouds—which, under the eons-long action of manifold forces, differentiated themselves into separate families, then separate galaxies, then individual suns.
But inevitably, in the early stages, exceptional situations occurred. Galaxies were as yet near to each other. They still contained anomalous groups. And so they exchanged matter. A large star cluster, for example, might form within one galaxy, but having more than escape velocity, might cross to another (with suns forming in it meanwhile) that could capture it.
Zeroing in on her destination, Leonora Christine kept watch for such a cluster: one whose speed she could easily match. And, as she entered its domain, she looked for a star of the right characteristics, spectral and velocital. To nobody's surprise, the nearest one had planets.
She might then, as originally planned, have gone by at high speed, making observations while she passed through the system. But Reymont said otherwise. For this once, let a chance be taken. The odds weren't so bad. Measurements made across light-years with the newest instruments and techniques developed aboard ship gave some reason to believe that a certain child of that yellow sun might offer a good home for men.
If not—a year would have been lost, the year needed to approach light-speed again with respect to the entire galaxy. But if there actually was a planet such as lived in memory, two years would have been gained.
The gamble seemed worthwhile. Given twenty-five fertile couples, an extra two years meant an extra half hundred ancestors for the future race.
Leonora Christine found her world, that very first time.
XVII
On a hill that viewed wide across a beautiful valley, a man stood with his woman.
Here was not New Earth. That would have been too much to expect. The river far below them was tinted gold with tiny life and ran through meadows whose many-fronded growth was blue. Trees looked as if they were feathered, in shades of the same color, and the wind set certain blossoms in them to chiming. It bore scents which were like cinnamon, and iodine, and horses, and nothing for which men had a name. On the opposite side lifted stark palisades, black and red, fanged with crags, where flashed the horns of a glacier.
Yet the air was warm; and humankind could thrive here. Enormous above river and ridges, towered clouds which shone silver in the sun.
Ingrid Lindgren said, "You mustn't leave her, Carl. Not in so final a way."
"What are you talking about?" Reymont retorted. "We can't leave each other. None of us can. Ai-ling understands you're something unique to me. But so is she, in her own way. So are we all, everyone to everyone else. Aren't we? After what we've been through together?"
"Yes. It's only—I never thought to hear such words from you, Carl, darling."
He laughed. "What did you expect?"
"Oh, I don't know. Something harsh and unyielding. Even cruel."
"The time for that is over," he said. "We've got where we were going. Now we have to start fresh."
"Also with each other?" she asked, a little teasingly.
"Yes. Of course. We'll need to take from the past what's good, and forget what was bad. Like . . . well, the whole question of jealously simply isn't relevant. We need to share our genes around as much as possible. Judas! Fifty of us to start a whole intelligent species again! So your worry about someone being hurt, or left out, or any such thing—it doesn't arise. With all the work ahead of us, personalities have no importance whatsoever."
He pulled her to him and chuckled down at her. "Not that we can't tell the universe that Ingrid Lindgren is the loveliest object in it," he said, threw himself down under a tall old tree, and tugged her hand. "Come here. I told you we were going to take a holiday."
Steely scaled, with a skirling along its wings, passed overhead one of those creatures called dragons.
Lindgren joined Reymont, but hesitantly. "I don't know if we should, Carl," she said.
"Why not?" he asked, surprised.
"So much to do."
"Construction, planting, everything's coming along fine. We can well afford to loaf a bit."
"But . . . all right," she said, the words hard and unwillingly brought forth. "Let's face the fact. Kings get no holidays."
"What are you babbling about?" Reymont lounged back against the rough, sweet-scented bole and rumpled her hair, which was bright beneath the young sun. After dark, there would be three moons to shine upon her, and more stars in the sky than men had known before.
"You," she said. "They look to you, the man who saved them, the man who dared survive, they look to you for—"
He interrupted her in the most enjoyable way.
"Carl!" she protested.
"Do you mind?"
"No. Certainly not. On the contrary. But—I mean, your work—"
"My work," he said, "is my share of the community's job. No more and no less. As for any other position: if nominated I will not run; if elected I will not serve,"
She looked at him with a kind of horror. "You can't mean that!"
"I sure as hell can." he answered. For a moment he turned serious again. "Once a crisis is past, once people manage for themselves . . . what better can a king do than lay down his crown?"
Then he laughed and made her laugh with him, and they were merely human. Which was enough.
NO TRUCE WITH KINGS
"Song, Charlie! Give's a song!"
"Yay, Charlie!"
The whole mess was drunk, and the junior officers at the far end of the table were only somewhat noisier than their seniors near the colonel. Rugs and hangings could not much muffle the racket, shouts, stamping boots, thump of fists on oak and clash of cups raised aloft, that rang from wall to stony wall. High up among shadows that hid the rafters they hung from, the regimental banners stirred in a draft, as if to join the chaos. Below, the light of bracketed lanterns and bellowing fireplace winked on trophies and weapons.
Autumn comes early on Echo Summit, and it was storming outside, wind-hoot past the watchtowers and rain-rush in the courtyards, an undertone that walked through the buildings and down all corridors, as if the story were true that the unit's dead came out of the cemetery each September Nineteenth night and tried to join the celebration but had forgotten how. No one let it bother him, here or in the enlisted barracks, except maybe the hex major. The Third Division, the Catamounts, was known as the most riotous gang in the Army of the Pacific States of America, and of its regiments the Rolling Stones who held Fort Nakamura were the wildest.
"Go on, boy! Lead off. You've got the closest thing to a voice in the whole goddamn Sierra," Colonel Mackenzie called. He loosened the collar of his black dress tunic and lounged back, legs asprawl, pipe in one hand and beaker of whisky in the other: a thickset man with blue wrinkle-meshed eyes in a battered face, his cropped hair turned gray but his mustache still arrogantly red.
"Charlie is my darlin', my darlin', my darlin'," sang Captain Hulse. He stopped as the noise abated a little. Young Lieutenant Amadeo got up, grinned, and launched into one they well knew.
"I am a Catamountain, I guard a border pass.
And every ti
me I venture out, the cold will freeze m—"
"Colonel, sir. Begging your pardon."
Mackenzie twisted around and looked into the face of Sergeant Irwin. The man's expression shocked him. "Yes?"
"I am a bloody hero, a decorated vet:
The Order of the Purple Shaft, with pineapple clusters yet!"
"Message just come in, sir. Major Speyer asks to see you right away."
Speyer, who didn't like being drunk, had volunteered for duty tonight; otherwise men drew lots for it on a holiday. Remembering the last word from San Francisco, Mackenzie grew chill.
The mess bawled forth the chorus, not noticing when the colonel knocked out his pipe and rose.
"The guns go boom! Hey, tiddley boom!
The rockets vroom, the arrows zoom.
From slug to slug is damn small room.
Get me out of here and back to the good old womb!
(Hey, doodle dee day!)"
All right-thinking Catamounts maintained that they could operate better with the booze sloshing up to their eardrums than any other outfit cold sober. Mackenzie ignored the tingle in his veins; forgot it. He walked a straight line to the door, automatically taking his sidearm off the rack as he passed by. The song pursued him into the hall.
"For maggots in the rations, we hardly ever lack.
You bite into a sandwich and the sandwich bites right back.
The coffee is the finest grade of Sacramento mud.
The ketchup's good in combat, though, for simulating blood.
(Cho-orus!)
The drums go bump! Ah-tumpty-tump!
The bugles make like Gabri'l's trump—"
Lanterns were far apart in the passage. Portraits of former commanders watched the colonel and the sergeant from eyes that were hidden in grotesque darknesses. Footfalls clattered too loudly here.
"I've got an arrow in my rump.
Right about and rearward, heroes, on the jump!
(Hey, doodle dee day!)"
Mackenzie went between a pair of fieldpieces flanking a stairway—they had been captured at Rock Springs during the Wyoming War, a generation ago—and upward. There was more distance between places in this keep than his legs liked at their present age. But it was old, had been added to decade by decade; and it needed to be massive, chiseled and mortared from Sierra granite, for it guarded a key to the nation. More than one army had broken against its revetments, before the Nevada marches were pacified, and more young men than Mackenzie wished to think about had gone from this base to die among angry strangers.
But she's never been attacked from the west. God, or whatever you are, you can spare her that, can't you?
The command office was lonesome at this hour. The room where Sergeant Irwin had his desk lay so silent: no clerks pushing pens, no messengers going in or out, no wives making a splash of color with their dresses as they waited to see the colonel about some problem down in the Village. When he opened the door to the inner room, though, Mackenzie heard the wind shriek around the angle of the wall. Rain slashed at the black windowpane and ran down in streams which the lanterns turned molten.
"Here the colonel is, sir," Irwin said in an uneven voice. He gulped and closed the door behind Mackenzie.
Speyer stood by the commander's desk. It was a beat-up old object with little upon it: an inkwell, a letter basket, an interphone, a photograph of Nora, faded in these dozen years since her death. The major was a tall and gaunt man, hooknosed, going bald on top. His uniform always looked unpressed, somehow. But he had the sharpest brain in the Cats, Mackenzie thought; and Christ, how could any man read as many books as Phil did! Officially he was the adjutant, in practice the chief adviser.
"Well?" Mackenzie said. The alcohol did not seem to numb him, rather make him too acutely aware of things: how the lanterns smelled hot (when would they get a big enough generator to run electric lights?), and the floor was hard under his feet, and a crack went through the plaster of the north wall, and the stove wasn't driving out much of the chill. He forced bravado, stuck thumbs in belt and rocked back on his heels. "Well, Phil, what's wrong now?"
"Wire from Frisco," Speyer said. He had been folding and unfolding a piece of paper, which he handed over.
"Huh? Why not a radio call?"
"Telegram's less likely to be intercepted. This one's in code, at that. Irwin decoded it for me."
"What the hell kind of nonsense is this?"
"Have a look, Jimbo, and you'll find out. It's for you, anyway. Direct from GHQ."
Mackenzie focused on Irwin's scrawl. The usual formalities of an order; then:
You are hereby notified that the Pacific States Senate has passed a bill of impeachment against Owen Brodsky, formerly Judge of the Pacific States of America, and deprived him of office. As of 2000 hours this date, former Vice Humphrey Fallon is Judge of the PSA in accordance with the Law of Succession. The existence of dissident elements constituting a public danger has made it necessary for Judge Fallon to put the entire nation under martial law, effective at 2100 hours this date. You are therefore issued the following instructions:
1. The above intelligence is to be held strictly confidential until an official proclamation is made. No person who has received knowledge in the course of transmitting this message shall divulge same to any other person whatsoever. Violators of this section and anyone thereby receiving information shall be placed immediately in solitary confinement to await court-martial.
2. You will sequestrate all arms and ammunition except for ten percent of available stock, and keep same under heavy guard.
3. You will keep all men in the Fort Nakamura area until you are relieved. Your relief is Colonel Simon Hollis, who will start from San Francisco tomorrow morning with one battalion. They are expected to arrive at Fort Nakamura in five days, at which time you will surrender your command to him. Colonel Hollis will designate those officers and enlisted men who are to be replaced by members of his battalion, which will be integrated into the regiment. You will lead the men replaced back to San Francisco and report to Brigadier General Mendoza at New Fort Baker. To avoid provocations, these men will be disarmed except for officers' sidearms.
4. For your private information, Captain Thomas Danielis has been appointed senior aide to Colonel Hollis.
5. You are again reminded that the Pacific States of America are under martial law because of a national emergency. Complete loyalty to the legal government is required. Any mutinous talk must be severely punished. Anyone giving aid or comfort to the Brodsky faction is guilty of treason and will be dealt with accordingly.
Gerald O'Donnell, Gen. APSA, CINC
Thunder went off in the mountains like artillery. It was a while before Mackenzie stirred, and then merely to lay the paper on his desk. He could only summon feeling slowly, up into a hollowness that filled his skin.
"They dared," Speyer said without tone. "They really did."
"Huh?" Mackenzie swiveled eyes around to the major's face. Speyer didn't meet that stare. He was concentrating his own gaze on his hands, which were now rolling a cigarette. But the words jerked from him, harsh and quick:
"I can guess what happened. The warhawks have been hollering for impeachment ever since Brodsky compromised the border dispute with West Canada. And Fallon, yeah, he's got ambitions of his own. But his partisans are a minority and he knows it. Electing him Vice helped soothe the warhawks some, but he'd never make Judge the regular way, because Brodsky isn't going to die of old age before Fallon does, and anyhow more than fifty percent of the Senate are sober, satisfied bossmen who don't agree that the PSA has a divine mandate to reunify the continent. I don't see how an impeachment could get through an honestly convened Senate. More likely they'd vote out Fallon."
"But a Senate had been called," Mackenzie said. The words sounded to him like someone else talking. "The newscasts told us."
"Sure. Called for yesterday 'to debate ratification of the treaty with West Canada.' But the bossmen are scattered up and down the
country, each at his own Station. They have to get to San Francisco. A couple of arranged delays—hell, if a bridge just happened to be blown on the Boise railroad, a round dozen of Brodsky's staunchest supporters wouldn't arrive on time—so the Senate has a quorum, all right, but every one of Fallon's supporters are there, and so many of the rest are missing that the warhawks have a clear majority. Then they meet on a holiday, when no cityman is paying attention. Presto, impeachment and a new Judge!" Speyer finished his cigarette and stuck it between his lips while he fumbled for a match. A muscle twitched in his jaw.
"You sure?" Mackenzie mumbled. He thought dimly that this moment was like one time he'd visited Puget City and been invited for a sail on the Guardian's yacht, and a fog had closed in. Everything was cold and blind, with nothing you could catch in your hands.
To Outlive Eternity Page 10